August 2013

One of the many back-to-school rituals – covering the year’s new textbooks – has been made easy as pie with a new piece of equipment at the Fond du Lac Public Library. For just $3 per book, the library will cover books up to 15 inches tall in just a few seconds. The clear plastic covers are extra-durable and resist moisture and sticky fingers.

International Literacy Day will be celebrated on September 8, and Fond du Lac Literacy Services is celebrating by joining the statewide 1200 Tutors in 12 Weeks campaign. The annual campaign, organized by Wisconsin Literacy, runs from Literacy Day to December 1, drawing attention to the need for volunteer tutors and donations.

August is here, and students are getting ready to go back to school. It’s time to hit the books in the nonfiction section and learn something new. Here’s a funny book in the nonfiction section that can help you ace Philosophy 101--Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding PhilosophyThrough Jokes by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein. This book is filled with jokes on the subjects of metaphysics, logic, and existentialism.

If you know what sesquioxidizing* is, you need to sign up right away for the Fond du Lac Literacy Services Scrabble Bee on October 3. Because if you do understand the art of sesquioxidizing, you probably already know that the word is on record as being the highest-scoring-ever in a game of Scrabble.

But if you’re like 99.99 percent of humanity, you’re more interested in having a good time and perhaps doing a good deed. These, too, will be on order at the Scrabble Bee at the Fond du Lac Public Library.

Our current display at the library features award-winning fiction and nonfiction books. Check it out. One of the award-winning authors on display is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. I have read and re-read his book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich which is based on Solzhenitsyn’s experiences in a Soviet labor camp. This book made an impression on me. It is the story of an ordinary Russian, Shukov (Ivan Denisovich), who is in a prison labor camp in Siberia in January, 1951.